Ice Fire Warriors

Shadow Cartel

This is a question I have received more than a few times and have been quite happy to answer for a number of reasons. Many newbies simply get lost and/or bogged down in all the "noise" of EVE... taking what they have done so far or what they have experienced... their dashed hopes and failures... personally. However they shouldn't.

Good and bad things have happened to everyone in EVE, even to us veterans. We all have stories to tell... some we are ashamed of... others that we look back on fondly because they were pivotal moments for us.

I invite other veterans to share the stories of their beginnings so the newbies that come to this forum can see that they are not alone... that their tribulations are not unique... that they can get through even the worst of things and become like us (sorta)._______________________

*light pipe**puffs it and settles into the easy chair next to the fire*

I started EvE as a miner/mission runner/carebear back in 2009.

After I finishing the tutorials I went and did the Epic Arc for the Sisters of EvE. I muddled my way through some of the missions (muddled = experimented to see what LIVED) in my Velator... then a Tristan (before it became a "good" ship)... and then a Catalyst. I even trained up to use an Iteron IV (old industrial ship that has been "phased out") which helped me move from location to location easily (ah, the nomadic life... never again).

Then I ran into a mission that mopped the floor with my ships (all of them). I went back to square one; I trained up some mining skills, set up my Iteron to mine, went to an asteroid belt, and began to mine. And mine. And mine. Only later did I learn that this was a horribly inefficient way to do this... but it worked for my purposes at the time. While I was mining I perused through the market to see what ships were available, what mods I could use for what... and lurked in the NPC corp chat... gathering whatever information I could use.

I used the ore I mined to buy a Thorax and set it up... and boy, did I set it up... shield AND armor reppers, small and medium guns... I felt I could take on the world! Five minutes after undocking it was a big ball of flames. It didn't hit anything! It just SAT there while NPCs danced around me! I was MAD.

So I went back to mining. Bought another Thorax. Found a "professional fit" on a website. And I spared no expense letting my OCD go crazy with it. All of the same guns (cruiser sized railguns this time), 2 armor reppers, MWD, etc. I went back and completed the damned mission... though I had to warp out a few times and return because of capacitor issues and damage.

Around this time I was convo'ed by a random person. This person asked me if I wanted to join a corp. Figuring that it wouldn't hurt to try, I accepted. Turns out I was lucky. The corp had been set up by some "bitter veterans" who wanted to try and manage a rookie corp for giggles. I asked questions. Many questions. Over and over again. Until they told me to **** off. Through them I learned how to [more or less] set up my ships and focus my character for PvE. I got a Vexor, skilled myself up properly (sorta), set it up the way they described, and then knocked down the remaining missions with ease.

I moved out to their HQ systems (I use the plural term as the corp was in its infancy and the "leaders" were still trying to get a handle on all of the logistics). We got into a war dec or two... I died several times due to some very stupid things I did... like warping into a group of super fast Tech 2 Heavy Assault Ships with an heavy-ass Battlecruiser. Or jumping into a gatecamp while doing missions.

Eventually I settled on mostly running missions and continued to ask questions (i.e. "What fit can I run missions with in a Hyperion?" and "How can I help?").

The corp moved again and I continued to "dabble" in this or that skillwise. After I was able to fly and fit a Tech 1 Mining Barge I realized that I just HATED mining... with a passion... and that while running missions was equally monotonous, they were still FAR more interesting as I could use my imagination and roleplay with the rats (something along the lines of, "HAHAHA, I keeling all u dirwy, diwty piwates!")

Around this time the corp began to dissolve because of internal issues (we won't get into that) and I had to pick sides. I chose to stay with the "Vets" as I figured that they "knew what they were doing" (hahaha) and that whatever venture they went into I could draw from their knowledge and better myself. Plus, they were pretty chill guys and I liked their banter... even though most of it was directed at me.

We went around from place to place... declaring war against various industrial corporations... knocking over POSs (Player Owned Starbases) at moons for profit... ransoming corporations that put no effort into defending themselves (for a "reasonable price")... etc. But I hungered for more.

Soon I found myself in Faction Warfare with these "Vets" and discovered that my skillset for dealing with straight, focused combat (both character-wise and player-wise) to be woefully inadequate. As a result I died. A lot.But even still, I found such... pleasure... in going out with and killing other like-minded players with no obligations to anything. I focused my combat and core skills, stuck around despite the abrasive nature of my peers... and now here I am years later; the director of a decent PvP corporation.

I am no longer afraid of grabbing a frigate and heading into hostile systems. I am more than happy to take out something stupid expensive to defend a friend in trouble. I have a firm grasp of how to fit ships and see what tactics will be used against me as soon as I arrive on field (or sometimes before that!)

I did all this! And so can you!

So my advice to you newbies? FIND A CORP AND MAKE FRIENDS. Doing so will take you places.

*Screen blurres into a flashback style motion*A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, there was me.

Argh, where to start, what to leave out and what to include. It's been 3.5 years since I started playing EVE Online. J'Poll is technically my 2nd character. I scrapped my first after about a month to reroll a proper specced character. Yes, back when I started, it did matter which race and bloodline you chose for your atrribute mapping.

So, off I went with my newly created character. Did run the tutorials, started the SoE arc but never finished it because it was just too hard for me. Okay, let me give you a bit of background on how I came to EVE. I've always been a fan of the X-series and when EVE went on sale on Steam I just dove in head first, as with X-series I wanted to become the industrial mogul that controlled the flow of products, so my initial training was purely focused on mining (because that would make you rich, boy was I wrong) and industry. So when the SoE rats handed my ass to me on a silver platter, I limped back to my Caldari base in Akiainavas.

At this point, after being fed up with the NPC corp chat and wanted to play the Multiplayer part of the MMO, I decided to join a corp. After doing a quick corp search using the in game corp search engine (or was it the Recruitment channel, I just can't remember) I joined a corp. Without doing any research on what they do and who they are or something like that (so, yet again a head first move). It looked all nice, until suddenly we were wardecced. Nobody in corp told me what that meand and what was the best way to minimize the risks. So I undocked, died, updated clone, undocked, died... Well, you can see the routine in that, after about 5 or 6 kills, one of the war targets camping my station contacted me. He explained what was happening, what a wardec was and thanked for the easy kills. He then noticed that I was a very new player and handed me some ISK to recover from the losses and the suggestion to stay in a NPC corp when you are still learning the very basics. So I did.

Only a couple of weeks later, I was happily mining in Umokka in my Badger (Yes, I know it's bad and inefficient now) and my Bantam (when it was still a mining frigate). Suddenly huge ships warp in (or at least, they looked huge at that time for me, they were mearly some mining barges and exhumers) accompanied with something that in my opinion was the size of a station (read: Orca). After some chats with them, I was invited in their public channel and not long after I joined that corp. All was well for a while, we mined the **** out of Umokka, did run some missions together and I even got my hand at my first recruiter position.

As a prime target of oppurtunity (all miners and mission runners) we of course had a couple of wardecs. When they staggered upon each other, me and another member decided to part ways and make our own corp. Keep in mind, we were both less than 6 months in game and hardly knew what WE were doing, let alone that we could help others. But, as usual, my heads first thing happened and suddenly we had our own corp. During which we moved around. First we went from Umokka (Lonetrek) to Itamo (The Forge). During our Itamo era, I made a stupid mistake (As killmails are prohibited, let me explain what happened: I undocked an untanked Badger from Jita, while this isn't the smartest thing in the first place. Let me list what was in my cargo: 4 x PLEX, 1 x Hulk, 1 x Covetor and a shitload of assorted skillbooks I needed). Given that ship and it's cargo, it's lifetime was just under 5 minutes after buying it, I exploded on the undock (and for the guy who killed me, the loot fairy was generous, as the 4 x PLEX dropped).

Not long after that happened, we got contacted by the GIMA (Greater Itamo Mafia Alliance). They ran an extortion ring in Itamo and the surrounding systems, you either paid them or you were wardecced. Me not wanting to deal with wars and also not wanting to pay some smug, we decided we were moving. A fellow member from day 1 suggested a relocation to Amarr space, it was quiet and for the miners even better because of the prices on Kernite at that point. So we did, we moved to Gensela (Kador) and lived there for a while. At this stage I also opened a 2nd account with my “second” main – Ace Menda.

During that time, we received our first couple of wars and during 1 we actually joined an alliance. In that alliance, I got my first taste of PvP (although no shots were fired because we camped the guys who wardecced my corp in their station). It was fun, my hands were shaking the entire time due to the adrenaline rush but in the end, it wasn’t my cup of tea (or coffee / beer / whatever beverage you prefer)

Eventually, we grew a good couple of members but then we had some issues with activity. Basically, I and the guy who started the corp were getting burned out, the "older" members weren't active and those who did, did not want to run the corp. So we contacted the corp we had left in the first place and suggested a merger. This happened and with that merger I became a director (one of the 2 EU directors) in the corp, the fellow EU director was someone who actually got recruited by me back in the days.

Now back in an active corp with lots of good people, we decided it was time for the next step. SOV null, this was mainly pressed by a couple of mission runners / ratters and some miners, who wanted to go there for the size of their wallet and the increase of their ISK/hour ratios. I claimed I would never set a foot in null-sec as I didn’t like the PvP side of EVE and I was happy in high-sec. They then claimed I could be useful here not only for some good mining and higher income from it but also to fly a Rorqual to boost and compress the ores. I shouted that I would NEVER were going to fly a capital ship.

But they convinced me to try it, so I set my course to null-sec, too bad that we got kicked out of the alliance only 2 weeks in, but soon we had another up in Geminate. So off we went again, and now the funny facts start. During my time in Geminate 2 things happened:A. I got my Rorqual and a Jump freighter (so the whole I will never fly a capital ship went out the window).B. I got more and more hooked with the PvP virus and I actually loved the spaceship violence more and more.

Then, **** tried to merge with the fan again, we got under attack. As in a proper attack, not some cloaky camper that kept us in our POS for days. And as usual the corp, like every time something prevented them from fattening their wallets, whined that they should leave for another alliance. At this point, I got fed up with the “carebear” attitude of the corp and left them for another corp in the same alliance. This is where I had huge amounts of fun, when possible, we mined or ratted together. But as soon as it was just needed, everybody dropped what they were doing and hopped into a PvP ship and joined the frenzy. It was also this corp that learned me a lot of how to PvP, how to fit ships properly and it was good fun.

As our alliance was basically a pet of SOLAR, we were drafted when SOLAR went to war with Legion of xXDeathXx. We joined for a good portion of the war, but near the end, some of the alliance leadership played their hand on how awful they were at their jobs and we stood up against them, in particular 1 member of our corp did. We got 2 option from the alliance leadership, leave or kick said member, so we left, but not after we would burn every possible bridge that existed behind us. After wondering around with the corp, we joined Ethereal Dawn (also a SOLAR Pet) and we had some fun there, but during this time my account numbers grew from 2 to 6 (mainly for traders and cyno ships, as I now also owned 2 carriers next to the Rorq and JF).

*small side step as that will merge into J’Poll’s story eventually*One of the accounts had an alt made for RvB, so I could PvP (Yes, at this point I changed from a carebear that occasionally did some PvP into a PvP player that occasionally did things to fund his PvP supplies) even when nothing was going on in ED or when there were boring CTAs (Call to Arms – usually means shooting a structure for a while). In RvB I got hooked up with 2 things. First was RvB Ganked, Mangala Solaris’ public fleets on Sundays. The second was joining an Agony BASIC class hosted by Greygal.

*Back to J’Poll*Where were we…ooh right…ED era.Well, after a while, there was an hostile take over in ED and our corp left because we didn’t support the new leader. Because of this and the lack of goals we had at this point (and busy RL for most of the active members) the corp went inactive, and I left.

I wondered around for a while. Got in contact again with the other EU Director who also left the corp by now and had his own corp, joined them to help them a bit and be among people I knew. But my intentions were very clear, NO MORE SOV. When they went to join Provi-block, I left. More solo play after that until a RL friend of mine contacted me and I joined him in Tribe (yes, I said no more SOV, but I never actually “joined” them in null). After I got bored there and my RL friend stopped playing due to relationship stuff, I left and joined a couple of other corps (let’s cut this short – They weren’t a fit for me, either by what they were planning to do in the near future or their lack of a proper leadership).

By this time, I made my own 1 man + alts corp, dropped back to 1 account and just did what I loved to do:During the week, I hang around in EVE, helping new players in rookie systems and chatting with friends. During the weekend, I joined RvB Ganked for my spaceship violence.Then one day, I saw that Greygal had left Agony Unleashed and made her own corp and was hosting a public roam on Sunday. So besides my Saturday roams with Ganked, I now had the Sunday too for explosions, great. Greygal, with her giggle-worthy ideas, decided to make a NEO II team and I did sign up (though never got the chance to go into the arena) and eventually also made an alliance which I joined.

So, we’ve come to present day. The days were I’m a vet / bitter vet (depending on mood and topics we are talking about). I play for fun, I’m among friend which who I have long lasting friendships with. I join at least the Redemption Road roams when I can and if possible, I make time for RvB Ganked too. And outside of that, I just hang around and chat and help new players (both in game and on the forums).

TL:DR – If that was possible, I wouldn’t have wasted about 30 minutes typing this all up. So don’t be lazy and read the post.

Basically, with all the accounts and characters, of most things I can say: Been there, done that.

And yes, as Shah said: Be social, meet people, join a corp (or multiple) and have fun. That last one is the MOST important, only ever play EVE in such a way that you are having fun.

After I finishing the tutorials I went and did the Epic Arc for the Sisters of EvE.

Tutorials? Arc?

Kids these days.

I have a acquaintance (one of the "bittervets" who took me in no less) who was around when there were no tutorials or killmails. Based on the stories he tells when he drinks I do consider myself lucky.

After I finishing the tutorials I went and did the Epic Arc for the Sisters of EvE.

Tutorials? Arc?

Kids these days.

I have a acquaintance (one of the "bittervets" who took me in no less) who was around when there were no tutorials or killmails. Based on the stories he tells when he drinks I do consider myself lucky.

What's your story Tau?

Yeah Tau...wall of text...wall of text...wall of text.

All regulars should at least post their "EVE is real" / "I was there" stories.

Revolutionary Front

I discovered EVE about 2 years ago, because my brother told me that it was similar to a game we had once enjoyed called Escape Velocity(EV). This turned out to be very true. If EVE was a single player game and had 1993ish graphics, it would pretty much be a direct ripoff of EV.

Anyhoo, I started out mining in a Bantam in my rookie system, did that for a couple days until I got killed by a canflipper, then relocated to a quieter, more remote location. I can recall that the Gurista belt rats would always jam me, and I didn't know how to deal with that, so every time they spawned I'd have to warp to another belt to keep mining.

I wanted to be more social at that point and actually join a corporation, but wasn't sure how to go about it. I browsed through all the materials I could find, and kept seeing info about EVE University, so I put in my application, and then after a few days waiting in the queue I was accepted. I was fascinated by fleets, so I started joining a mining fleets every day, until about a week later when we got wardecced. At the time, E-Uni members were forbidden to undock during war unless they were in a PvP fleet. So I fitted out a Rifter and learned to tackle war targets. For a couple months I would join PvP fleets during wars, and mine during peace. At the same time I created my first secret alt and learned how to make lots of isk ninja salvaging.

Then I took a break from the game for a few months and when I came back, the Uni was setting up a remote camp in Solitude, so I got involved in that. Nobody out there was doing any PvP, and I wanted to learn to FC, so I created the Solitude Rifter Team as a weekly event for the Uni, and ran that for a few months, roaming into lowsec and NPC null. One of my comrades then decided that we should have a nullsec campus in Syndicate, so I jumped in on that and when our leader suddenly stopped logging in I wound up in a leadership role. (It turned out that the guy in charge had to make an emergency trip to Turkey to help his family get visas to flee from the crisis that was just starting to develop in Syria, he reappeared several months later.)

We were having some difficulty convincing people to join us in nullsec, so one of my friends decided to haul out 100 fitted Merlins and give them away for free in an effort to gather some PvP footage for a propaganda video. I burned through about 60 of them learning to solo PvP. Most of my fights were with Flying Dangerous, who were based right next to us, and to my surprise I actually won most of them. FIGL seemed impressed and invited me to join, so I did, and we all moved to Curse.

FIGL was ok, but all that they cared about was goodfights, and I was looking for a corp that actually had goals. I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, so I founded Revolutionary Front and recruited lots of newbies who wanted to jump right out to null and fight everyone in sight. We did that for awhile, then for various reasons ended up moving our base to highsec, where we became more involved in piracy and ninja looting.

At that point I was invited to join Belligerent Undesirables, which was a new thing then. I began occasionally running safaris and encouraged my corp members to do so as well. My corp grew, and we founded an alliance. We did some wardecs (which went poorly for the most part), stole lots of things and violenced many spaceships. Eventually I got burnt out as CEO, though, and since nobody competent was interested in taking over, the corp slowly died and the alliance disbanded.

I took a 6 month break at that point and came back to do a bit of ninja baiting, a bit of miner bumping, a brief attempt to revive Revolutionary Front, and a few solo wardecs. And that pretty much brings us to the present, where I'm trying some new things and have a couple of secret projects going that I'll probably share at a later time if they go well.

After several attempts to post the wall-of-text, and being prevented even though the character count was <6000, you are only gonna get the abridged version.

Towards then end of my long WoW career (Death Knights and dual talents made my Paladin tank obsolete by the time we had downed all but the last boss in Ulduar-25), another co-worker was heavily lobbying me to play EVE. My friend had been playing EVE since beta. It seemed like a very strange game to me, so I resisted. My friend wouldn't relent though, and I eventually tried EVE. I signed-up for a full year subscription about an hour after logging in for the first time.

Why I joined EVE: I just wanted to mine.

My friend Aandaan (trivia: he's one day younger than Dr Caymus, the character with the most SP in EVE) thought I was insane, but I just wanted to mine like my old UO and WoW days. I had enough of rushing home from work three times a week to raid. I just wanted the monotony and OCD of mining again. I thought a Hulk was the coolest ship in EVE.

So upon starting EVE for the first time, I was greeted with a character creator. I chose Caldari because I heard they were awesome (best attributes and starting skills), and my friend was Caldari too. The next thing I had to do was assign 5 attribute points, with no more than 3 to a single attribute.

I had no idea what attributes were, and keep in mind that back then they could never be changed! I had that mapping for 3 years.

I was "born" into space in Todaki, in an ugly looking Ibis (it has been re-skinned since then), near an asteroid with a small orbiting red +

I figured I wasn't going to shoot anything until I knew what the consequences were. After a bit of fumbling, I figured out how to warp to a nearby station. Since I didn't know about bookmarks, I didn't bookmark where I was before I warped-off, so I could never return.

Thus ended the "tutorial" for me.

This was Feb 23, 2009. Apocrypha with the overhauled "New Player Experience" (NPE) was released March 10th. I did the SoE arc for the first time about a year ago to raise my Minmatar standing. I've never done the tutorials.

Shortly after that, I joined my friend Aandaan in w-space, and lived there for about 2.75 years, until everyone got bored and basically left EVE. I went to w-space to mine of course. Built my first Rorqual in a C2. Self-destructed it when we later moved. Later bought another Rorqual when we moved into a C5. I also got asked to train for a Chimera for capital escalations, as we had lots of Archon pilots, which sucked with Tengus.

During one of our w-space moves we ran into another corp. Our tower was anchoring when they came along. We offered to leave, and that lead to us unanchoring. That's a lot of time. We chatted, and decided to join their alliance. We shared the w-space system (we were more advanced than they were) until we left the system and alliance to move into a C5. Heck, _I_ was the one that saved their poorly defended medium tower when it was reinforced. My first PvP experiences and roams in lowsec were with that alliance.

Living in w-space taught us a lot, and added to my already large amount of naturally occurring paranoia. We also earned and lost many billions of ISK there.

I'm now living a quiet mostly solo hisec life. Every once in a while I get the urge to join a nulsec alliance where I can be an industrialist as well as PvP.

Rifterlings

Point Blank Alliance

My boss used to goof off at work playing this game with spaceships and stuff. I liked spaceships, so I got to talking to him about it one day. It was called Eve, and apparently was a big awesome universe in which people were free to do pretty much almost anything to each other to win. It was apparently a super deep sandbox with a lot of emergent gameplay and pewpew. He was part of an alliance living in lawless space, and everything sounded super cool. There were even some awesometrailers.

So I joined.

I did the tutorials quickly, but skipped the "boring" ones (business, mining, industry, etc). To this day I have a shoddy understanding of Eve's industry. I jumped over and did the Sisters of Eve epic arc, learning some of the finer points of range control, tanking, tracking, etc. Thrashers are apparently educational. I then tried doing Level 1 missions. 30 minutes later, I decided missioning isn't for me, and jumped into factional warfare instead.

FW was a bit of a charlie foxtrot. The Tribal Liberation Force was completely disorganized, full of people saying dumb stuff, and generally lacking any sort of constructive community. I tried to strike out on my own, but after trying to take on a Tengu with my Thrasher (it went okay), I concluded that I need some help.

So I joined my boss's nullsec alliance -- Ushra'Khan -- some 2-3 weeks into the game. As it turns out, he was mostly an industrialist, so we didn't share many interests, but the alliance did have some very good PvPers. I started flying Rifters over and over and over... and over. Tackling for gangs, scouting, soloing, and most importantly exploding. I started a blog to document lessons learned the hard way. I was becoming known as one of the "Rifter guys". Plenty of adventures were had, both big (like burning Providence and kicking CVA and their pets out) and small (lots of fun solo work). Things turned a bit toxic as the New Providence NIP collapsed though, and I left deeply disappointed in some verbal abuse I received for not enjoying flying big ships, and trying to contribute in any way other than being a mindless drone pushing F1.

I gave factional warfare another shot, trying to start a corporation (Shioshi) with a friend. It didn't really work out, since our goals differed greatly, so I tried starting up my own corp (Rifterlings). That didn't work out either, and I ended up in an old group called T.R.I.A.D. They had some historical ties with my old alliance, and seemed like cool folk. They had some odd internal tensions and expectations, and within a couple months I was in the middle of some pretty hilarious drama. I ended up leaving of my own volition, and trying to start Rifterlings again.

It went slightly better this time, but not well enough. The few members I got were disorganized and it was hard to get anything done. We decided to merge into MSCS in Ushra'Khan to have more of a community. That didn't work as well as I'd hoped either, so I just went back to dedicating a lot of time to making Rifterlings work out. This time it actually took off, and we've been growing ever since.

Since then, we've been through some adventures involving butting heads with some faction warfare bigwigs like Late Night Alliance (hi, ShahFluffers), wars, allies, enemies, and a lot more. I learned a lot about herding cats, delegation, managing logistics, and general leadership -- much of which I'm sure can be generalized to real life as well. It's been a fun, ongoing experience, and I don't regret a minute of it.

EVE University

Ivy League

I always found the majority of EVE players claiming to be pirates to be flat out moronic. That epithet never fit for the definition I knew from the real world.

It was more like tossing a brick into a china shop then sifting through what remains rather than actually trying to earn from it. Many such "pirates" will talk about KB's being a joke, yet still follow the "blow it up" model of piracy - kb fluffing for fun more than making income.

So I'd chatted with a few folks in the corp early on and we discussed this stuff a bit. They pointed out how you can't trust *ANYONE* in EVE so real piracy (hijacking someone then extorting funds to release them) doesn't work. Too many don't honor ransoms for it to function but, being the stubborn type I am, I kept to the idea and brought it up in "piracy career" discussions.

Well, as happened in the Uni in those days, a batch of members left at the same time and formed up a small corporation of their own. We'd discussed the topic a few times and they'd been intrigued by what I described. I'd been training for exploration covert ops and they asked me about my idea on piracy and if I might be interested in helping them try it out. I figured what the hell - theory vs practical - so I helped.

I practiced for a few days before agreeing and became really fast at locking down signals to 100% with the old scanning system. I'd help by finding and getting a lock on a good target, warp to it and let the crew know. They'd arrive at the warp-in I provided while I moved out a bit - I'd redeploy 1 probe per gate and "watch" those gates as they tackled the target and negotiated for ransom.

We didn't make a lot and still ended up popping several but it was 100% "PvP" based income. All risk, all interaction, guns pointed at and used on the targets, then negotiations... Just no KB entries when it worked.

It was mass "fun" seeing if we could do it. No it wasn't "getting rich" by EVE definitions (around 1 bill a month each - a big chunk of that from a JF we nailed) but actually being pirates by a true "real" definition. That was neat stuff to actually prove as being possible.

The problem - well, they didn't blame me for it but I blamed myself and stopped doing it: I missed a local spike as negotiations started.

For me, there was little worse than sitting in a cloaked covert ops frigate watching as my crew was taken apart by another gang. They laughed about it but I took the responsibility of "eyes" for targets & safety more seriously. I'd messed up and they lost their ships for my error. After thinking about the whole thing - I called it quits. This was as much due to my corp and situation as it was due to my foul-up.

"Technically" it wasn't against Uni rules but if I'd been discovered being involved, I'd have been told to stop -- I never demanded anything from others (ransom negotiations) nor was I shooting nor otherwise being directly hostile - I was just invisible eyes but the theme of the Uni back then was against such things and I knew this.

Oh and another fun thing I looked at back then was stealing bubbles from sloppy gate campers in nullsec. Sadly, you can't unanchor someone else's bubble (that was a fun "oh sh**!!!" education - I'd practiced timing and distances on SiSi with my own bubbles first... Someone else deploying them? I hadn't checked on that. *snicker*). This would have been a fun thing to do for very trivial income. IMO income isn't everything - it's having fun at what you do in a game. Most base their 'fun" on isk values, who gains and/or who loses more, a few others don't. That's a personal decision.

The key to this is just because others tell you something won't work, that it can't be done or isn't worth doing doesn't mean that they are always right nor that their way of valuing their game time will match yours.

Remember to keep thinking for yourself and TRY things. The worst that can happen is you get popped and lose some stuff but you might find a way to have fun in the game that few others ever thought possible.

Brutor Tribe

Minmatar Republic

I don't know if I count as a veteran or not--my character is old but I've come and gone from EVE a lot over the years to play other games, growing board with whatever I was doing, or the last break was because I had a new job that just took up all my time as I got up to speed.

But I started playing in December 2006.

There weren't really any tutorials to speak of, but I loved the ships, fitting, and testing my fits in various missions. I used to keep a record of what I was doing and learning about here in this forum actually. One of my early goals was to run every L2 mission out of Rens using a Rifter (Human Cattle was a rough one). I got my first cruiser from a corporation that read my "blog" here, felt super-clever for mining in a Scythe while orbiting an Omber rock and dragging my jetcan behind me with a tractor beam.

I remember losing my first battlecruiser (Cyclone) in a L3 mission.

I remember trying to run every L3 mission in a Jaguar, making a forum signature with a shot of my Jaguar behind a L3 mission battlecruiser and the caption "Objects in mirror are deadlier than they appear." I remember when the Hurricane came out and I fell in love with it. Then I took a break from EVE around then.

I think AT3 came next, and I saw the Abaddon on the screen for the first time.

I resubbed, sold anything that wouldn't fit in my hauler, and flew over to Amarr space and started doing the Amarr tutorial missions that were added. I basically dropped everything Minmatar and have flown Amarr ships ever since.

I remember grinding through a low quality L2 agent to get access to a good L2 agent, which I used to get access to a ****** L3 agent, which got me to a good L3 agent, which I used to get to a crappy L4 agent, which got me to L4Q20 agent in hisec. (Yeah, I'm glad all agents are =Q20 now.) I bought an Abaddon with a loan from a long time friend in the game, and paid it back pretty quickly, then lost it in the next mission I did, borrowed money for the fittings and insurance, and then flew it for a long time. Still never really did any PVP.

I joined a few corporations over this time... but none of them really had a plan. They would talk about ship replacement programs and the direction of the corporation, then leave us high and dry when we lost our ships and had no income or plan to replace ships. After two corporations like that I just made my own corporation with a buddy and we tried out Faction Warfare and doing some nullsec ratting in Providence. FW was in it's infancy then, not really that organized, and the rewards were crappy--but we had some fun.

Then I joined PIE, but I had to make an Amarr character to do it. I had rationalized that with a much more focused approach I could get back to the same combat skills pretty quickly, but then I got a new job and ran out of time to play, and dropped that character and EVE for awhile.

Then the next AT came around, and I resubbed--my friend reluctantly joining me. This time we decided to venture out into Nullsec, and I got my first taste of null-life. It was a buffer alliance between lowsec and deep 0.0 space, boasting a robust ship replacement program and big opportunities to get into great fights.

I would ship up for every CTA that went out (and a LOT of them went out) and anytime I lost my ship when following my alliance FC's orders, it was crickets chirping on ship replacement. Then they announced we were deploying to go fight our neighbor who had three times the pilots and real ship replacement (as in pre-fitted ships handed to line-pilots for ops), and balked when we decided to insure our ships, blow them up, and head back to hisec in covert ops ships.

Oh yeah, we did some C5-C6 sleeper sites while there sometimes, but the money wasn't much better than just running L4s, because they didn't really enforce any fleet doctrine.

Okay, so back in hisec, I take another break from EVE.

Next Alliance Tournament comes along, and I begrudgingly resub, and immediately start looking for a nullsec group with ship replacement, GOOD income opportunities, and space they actually have a chance to control. I was also looking for work at the time, so I had a lot more free time.

I joined ATLAS, and probably had the most fun I've had in EVE for awhile--several months. I learned a lot about fleet fighting, got into a couple really big scraps that were fun, made this stupid video to spoof the "We Were There" trailer, and generally had a good time. Then I got the job I have now, and had no time to play anymore, and even when I did, it was for too brief a time to really enjoy myself. So I moved all my crap back to hisec, and trickled off my playtime till I took another break.

A little over a month ago, I read about B-R, and decided to play on a trial account for a few days, just to see what was new. Within a couple days, I resubbed, and I'm playing EVE again. I have a different friend that is trying it this time around, who I think "gets" EVE (the other guy ragequit a lot when he lost ships). Right now I'm really just running L4 missions, working on my PI setup, and building up a nestegg, while my friend gets a sustainable income set up.

Then I think we're going to join RvB and just have some goodfights. Down the road I think Faction Warfare will be a reality.

So I've been playing EVE a long time off and on, and I've tried doing a little bit of everything (except manufacturing). The last time I played was the most fun, and I'm actually really enjoying myself this go around. I feel like I have more of a plan than I did before, too. When I wear my EVE t-shirt at work and people ask about it I tell them, "It's a really interesting game... but... you probably wouldn't like it."

I don't want the blame for anyone that gets hooked on this punishment.

Amok.

Goonswarm Federation

I am not the oldest on here, nor am I the youngest. I started Eve because a college friend of mine had already been playing Eve, so I watched how he played Eve and slowly became more and more interested in it. I eventually took the plunge and bought a 30 day ETC (back when you could still get them). I created my first character here Mal on Feburary 14th 2008 (Ironic timing if I do say so myself). We and a few others we met in game decided to form a corp and we puttered around a bit before we had to disband temporarily to avoid a wardec, once the wardec was over we rejoined and joined my first alliance.

We chilled in this alliance for awhile until it became clear that we were never going to be able to grow our current corp (people kept leaving or we kept recruiting trials), so we joined a fellow Corp in the Alliance. Then a series of wardecs killed our alliance lol.

Around this time was when I started getting my first tastes of PVP, and although I sucked horribly at it I was hooked.

Around the time our Alliance started to collapse I was given an offer from one of my friends in corp to join him and a few others in LFC in Executive Outcomes. Thus around August of 2008 I went into 0.0 for the first time to live in my Eve career. Things didn't go as planned though, I was low on sp (sub 10 mil sp) and maturity wise I wasn't quite there yet. I had difficulty having the right ships for fleets and didn't feel like a fit in. So after 4 months I decided to head back to highsec to try my luck in FW. My college friend who had followed along followed suit, and so we spent a month in FW. Eventually the friend who invited us to 0.0 had also returned to highsec and restarted my old second corp. This was around January 2009, it turned out to be fortuitous as Executive Outcomes would be involved in the great BOB disbanding and lots of turmoil ensued which wouldn't have helped my low sp and immaturity.

I doodled around in highsec running missions and the like until drama started up in the corp late in 2009. We eventually split from the Second Corp and spent time time in a Third Corp used to run POSs for a few months before boredom in Spring of 2010 forced me to leave. I eventually joined a corp renting from the Initiative in Detorid, so I spent around 2 months with them relearning null. However leadership went afk and the corp quickly started to collapse so I left, and was given the opportunity to rejoin the remnants of LFC in my current corp The Executives in the summer of 2010.

In 2010 The Executives were part of IT Alliance (or BOB mark II), and eventually we went on to be in a coalition which controlled 4 regions. During this time we lived in Fountain and from 2010 until 2011 when IT Alliance was booted from 0.0 I did pvp in fleets and dabbled in different parts of the game. A big highlight was getting on my first titan kill on January 1st 2011. Once It Alliance was booted from nullsec we dabbled around Minmatar lowsec for awhile and then moved to Stain. Later on that same year we were given the opportunity to return to Fountain by TEST under our old moniker Executive Outcomes and thus we became the only member of both the HBC and CFC.

Life for me was mostly PVP fleets and 0.0 industry which funded it. However HBC and CFC started to have a drama bomb so we were forced to choose sides and thus gave up our holdings in Fountain and went to Cloud Ring in 2012. Essentially since then my story has remained the same. I was involved in the battle of B-R and got on several super capital kills. I just PVP and do 0.0 industry. It actually has been nice to have a stable home compared to my early history of instability. I am going on 4 years this summer with the same corp. I don't plan on leaving Eve anytime soon.

Plus side is that because I have always remained subscribed my main has been able to train almost continuously (there was a 6 month stretch before multiple character training I was training an alt), the 10 mil sp which used to hamper me in 2008 is almost 100 mil sp now and I have experience to make it work.

"When going to a Party with wine, women, and song. Always ascertain the vintage of the first two."

AirHogs

Zulu People

It's been a long time since I started this game.Maybe I'm not among the first to set foot in New Eden but I'm still old enough to participate in this topic.

My story starts in late 2007 when I was still playing WoW at my favourite net cafe.These were the days when Band of Brothers was still supreme....One day I saw one of the admins who was on his break,playing a spaceship simulation game.The graphics were alluring and I always loved sci-fi.So I asked him: "What is this?".He replied "EVE".At that moment I remembered an article from a recent edition of a gaming magazine called "Level" where they were telling about the story of a corporation(Guiding Hand Social Club) which was robbed for trillions of ingame currency of "ISK" in a game EVE Online.Then I sat down beside him and asked dozens of questions,then more and more.He suddenly said: "Why don't you try it out?".He sent me a buddy trial and I accepted.I remember very well the character creation screen.It was more simple than it is now but it was still fun to create.I chose the race Amarr because my new friend told me about the superiority and the simplicity of playing the race.I created a hooded character and selected the occupation of Special Forces.Then when it came to selecting the stats my friend decided it would be better to have attributes for ship training so I could explore the variety of ships more quickly.This was made as a trial/error but I loved playing Amarr.The idea of playing with lazers was so attractive...

I did the tutorials.Then I did some missions.After few days I was confronted by another Amarr player which was older than me who asked whether I wanted to join his corporation or not.I said: "why not?".I joined his corp and it was very new.The player seemed so knowledgeable,explaining me many things before I even asked about them.The corp only had few players and most of them were inactive so I searched for another.While searching,my admin friend told me ways to earn much more ISK more easily.One of them was going to low security systems with my frigate and shooting at rats at the belts there.I was doing so well and earning so much money for the several hours I was there I was as happy as a stuffed pig.Then one moment I saw a red box on the overview,I lost my ship and lost my pod because I didn't know how to escape back then(I wasn't even warp scrambled! *giggles*).I was so furious of being ganked and being a player from WoW I asked my admin friend to take my revenge but he refused and told me that isn't how things work in EVE online.So he gave me some ISK and a new frigate and I moved back to doing missions.

I told my admin friend about my search for a new corp and he told me about the Turks living in null sec near Osmeden and they were many.I liked the idea of being protected and living by people who spoke the same language that I did.My friend prepared me to join the Turkish alliance and gave me a fitted Armageddon battleship while I only had 1-1.5 million skillpoints.I then joined the alliance's newbie corp and headed to null-sec.At the border of null-sec,my Armageddon got ganked.I was wiser now and escaped with my pod.It was a gate camp,a concept that I didn't know about at that time.I apologized to my admin friend and almost cried.I even thought to quit the game for good.My friend told me it was ok and no problem.My days at the Turkish alliance was jolly and fun.I was showered with items which was cheap but very expensive to me.I was even upgraded to the veteran corp and all was good until I was confronted by the alliance leader for my bad habit of paying ransoms.I got into an argument with him and I got kicked from the alliance.

I returned to my first corp and was greeted like this:image .I stayed a while and then the CEO decided to put the corp into stasis after some months.So I looked for another.

Something new called "Faction Warfare" was introduced and I wanted to try it out.I joined a FW corp and lost many ships.This didn't bother me because I was having a wonderful time and I was self-sufficient now.The people in the corp and the CEO were very helpful.They taught me the basics of PVP.I had my fun and decided to return to my first corp after seeing it was now active and thriving again.

Once I returned to my first corp again,I was amazed how much progress was made in a short time.The corp had 200 active members and was in a 0.0 alliance(Systematic-Chaos or En Garde,can't remember the name right now).I used the jump bridges which were and still are very easy way to travel in null-sec to get to the home system.While I was carrying my trivial stuff with a Bestower to null,I got alphaed(one shotted) by a stealth bomber before my warp completely ended to a jump bridge.I was impressed once again how dangerous null-sec in EVE could be.One day I took refuge in an alliance station while running away from some hostiles.Then I saw the local grow in the numbers of hostiles non-stop until it was 300 of them siegeing the station.The station was camped 2 days straight with me and some 50 others trapped in the station.We sent out distress calls to ally alliances and at the end of the second day,Against All Authorities' capital fleet came to our rescue.They shooed away the hostiles and stood outside the station.Imagine how ecstatic I felt when I undocked and saw them guarding the station!

I took a break from EVE and joined another 0.0 alliance when I returned back.I did stuff and occasionally got ganked by kamikaze squads.After that I took a 2 years break from EVE and I returned earlier in summer and now I peacefully do PVE in my one man corp.

That is my story so far,the point of my story is,the more you learn this game,the better you'll become and have more fun times.Maybe I was pampered at the beginning but I would still have fun if I wasn't.Who knows,maybe you too can become pampered if you are friendly enough to make friends?